Buildings located in areas subject to the risk of damage and destruction from floodwaters associated with storm surges or rising water must either be elevated in place or removed from the floodplain in order to reduce flooding damage to them. Construction of foundations for buildings above the flood hazard elevation is often not practical from a technical and/or economic standpoint. Even where foundation construction above historic flood levels is feasible, the trend toward increasingly powerful storm surges and rising water in recent years poses a risk to any building in proximity to a body of water.
One potential approach to minimize the risks associated with storm surges and rising water is to design a jackable foundation that can be raised and lowered with the flood water level. While designs for jackable building structures are known, the problem of maintaining a level platform under conditions of variable and/or unevenly-distributed lifting force has heretofore not been satisfactorily solved.